Dolphin Girl

by Shel Delisle

  So, if I’m right that means Sam is too afraid of hurting Alana and maybe too afraid of what his trophy case friends would think if he actually dated me. It’s weak and I deserve to be treated better. I do. The problem with that? I like him anyway. The way I feel — in fact, this entire situation — is out of my control. It’s like this fast current is carrying me in a direction I don’t want to go.

  And tomorrow’s Hunt will be out of control, too. The only thing left to do is to go with the flow.

  Dolphins have no physical home. To a dolphin, “home” is wherever pod-mates are.

  (Excerpt: The Magic and Mystery of Dolphins)

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  I’m wearing Dolphin Girl.

  At the Macy’s entrance to the mall, I look through the costume’s mouth. All I see is The Gap and Hallmark cards on the left, The Loft and Musicland on the right. Straight ahead is a crowd of people milling around.

  Less than two minutes ago, we completed our first check-in with Irwin.

  Earlier, Lexie said, “Let’s start with easy stuff. Look at number twelve. You could wear your dolphin costume. We’ll do it right after check-in.”

  Easy? Yeah. Sure. Easy for you.

  But it’s worth thirty points, so there’s no sense standing around. I take off running, my dorsal fin flopping around as I try to avoid a lady pushing a stroller.

  Lucas keeps pace with me to film this task. To be honest, he looks as ridiculous as I do. He’s wearing transvestite-quality make-up, and Lexie’s spiked his hair three inches off his head. Items #21 and #22.

  Weaving through shoppers, I take tiny, quick steps because the bottom of the costume is incredibly narrow. It would have been impossible to dance in. Lexie, Willow and Tara follow, laughing hysterically, which gets Lucas and me started. I’m more than halfway there, running past Pac Sun.

  Don’t get distracted. Keep going.

  As I pass Godiva, turning right into the food court, I nearly run over Ashley and Alana and have to skirt around them. They’re holding their phones open toward the main entrance. And who steps through the door? Sam in his Speedo and goggles.

  Nice. He looks waaay better than me.

  ~~~

  We end up at Willow’s house after completing item # 7—something wild and out of control. We doubled the speed limit near a deserted playground. Lucas took phone footage of the sign—10 mph — and then trained his phone on the odometer until it read “20 mph” while Lexie shrieked, “We’re wild. We’re out of control!”

  They head to the garage, arguing Barney vs. The Wiggles, to perform item # 31. I know they won’t need me on this task, so I wander into the house’s den. This is the kind of room I could settle into immediately, every wall lined with books and overstuffed, comfy couches.

  Standing in front of the shelves, I survey all the titles and then spot a row of Chicken Soup books. “Hey Willow! You guys have Chicken Soup,” I holler toward the garage where they’re setting up.

  “Oh, I know,” she says wistfully, “But my mom loves those books and she’d kill me if we shredded the pages.”

  Lexie marches over and grabs the book from my hands. “We have to make soup with this, Willow.”

  “She’ll kill me.”

  “We’ll buy her a new book.”

  “Why can’t we just buy one now?”

  “Because,” Lexie says like she’s explaining to a child, “Amazon does not teleport paper books. Doesn’t your mom have a Kindle?” Willow shrugs while Lexie juggles the book back and forth. “Sorry. This one is being sacrificed for the greater good.”

  Willow covers her eyes as Lexie rips three or four pages from the book and starts tearing them into strips. “Look! Noodles.” Lexie finds a pot under the counter and adds the book noodles. They flutter into the pot. Then she raids the pantry for a can of chicken soup, grabbing the opener. “Film this, Lucas.”

  She stirs the mixture as Lucas films, takes the spoon and sips it. “Mmmm. I feel better already.”

  It’s because we just earned fifty points.

  “On to the next.” Lexie rinses the soup and some of the book down the disposal as Willow finally uncovers her eyes. “Jane, we need your vote to break the tie. ‘You Are Special’ by Barney, or ‘Fruit Salad’ by The Wiggles?”

  No contest. I love the purple dinosaur.

  ~~~

  While I pick pieces of peanut from Tara’s hair, a side effect of her Herbal Essences experience before we left Willow’s house, the team debates our next task. Poor Tara. All Willow had in her pantry was chunky. I wipe the peanut butter residue on my shorts and say, “Let me see the list.”

  There are a couple things that would be easy that we haven’t done yet: #14 and #51. Then I get a great idea. “Let’s do number twenty-three — pet a cow. It’s worth fifty points.”

  “Okay,” Tara says. “But how far way are those farms?”

  Lucas pipes up. “Twenty minutes. Sorry, Jane, I think it’ll take too long to get there.”

  “But we’re only five minutes from The Shoppes. There’s that big ceramic statue outside The Sacred Cow.” It’s this funky consignment shop everyone loves. I hand the list to Lucas.

  “You’re a genius,” he says, and Lexie makes a U-turn at the next light.

  When we pull into the center and cruise past Burger King, Willow says, “Look. The Dudes.”

  Nigel Chang and his friends sit in the kiddie area, tossing colored balls from the play pit at each other and laughing.

  “Let’s stop for a minute,” I suggest. We park and walk to a fence that separates the parking lot from the restaurant. Hanging over the fence, I say, “Hey Nige! How’s the hunt goin’?”

  “Bien, Jane. Doin’ bien.” He flips his long, black bangs away from his face. “We just got three-hundred points.” Justin tosses a yellow ball and it hits the back of Nigel’s head. He laughs.

  “Wow,” I say. “For what?”

  Nigel puts his elbows on the picnic table in front of him. “We got the munchies and Andre’s good at math, so we consumed ten-thousand calories… times three.”

  Andre gives his stomach a pat.

  I look at Nigel. “You ate thirty-thousand calories?”

  “Almost. I’m still working on this.” Nigel holds up jumbo-sized shake.

  I chuckle. Lexie laughs outright and pretty soon we’re all hysterical — even Nigel.

  He sort of hiccups. “What’s so funny?”

  Lexie shakes her head. “You were supposed to eat at McDonald’s, not BK.”

  “Aw, man.” Nigel calmly takes a sip of his shake. “I told you guys Mickey D’s.”

  The rest of the courtyard pod thinks this is as funny as my friends do. They double over, laughing. Nigel picks up a blue ball and tosses it at Andre. “Look at us. Now we have to go bribe the judge.”

  This cracks me up. “Good luck bribing Irwin,” I tell him. I figure these guys need all the help they can get at this point. “Did you know you can pet a cow over there?” I point at the entrance to The Sacred Cow. “Plus, you get extra points for my assistance.”

  “Cool. Thanks. See ya.” Nigel mentions this to Andre, slurps the last of the shake and gives his stomach a rub-a-dub.

  ~~~

  At the second check-in, I hand Irwin a cup of Coldstone and tease, “Hope you enjoy it, Tad.”

  Irwin smiles and digs in.

  “Did we make you happy?” I ask. Because that’s item #33 and worth fifty points.

  Irwin smirks as he pulls the clean spoon from his mouth. “Not yet.”

  “Well, are we at least winning?” Lexie asks.

  “Nope. The Dudes are in first with six-hundred twenty points. The Champs are second with five-hundred eighty-five. You’re in third with five-hundred fifty.” Irwin shovels in more ice cream, and we cruise off.

  Nigel didn’t need help as much as I thought.

  “I don’t care if we lose,” Lexie says as we head to the Jeep. “I just don’t want Alana to beat us.”

  Ev
en Willow agrees. At the other end of the center from the checkpoint is a Wendy’s. Lucas has volunteered to drink Wendy’s chicken nugget sauce — if we tackle the first part and secure them.

  “We’re going to need to buy nuggets,” Willow says.

  “Not necessarily.” Lexie parks the Jeep.

  Inside she heads straight to the counter, while Lucas finds us a table. Right before I sit across from Lucas, I notice Sam at a small table against the window with a pile of sauce packets in front of him, most of them empty. A small drawstring bag hangs on the back of his seat.

  I slide into the seat across from him. “You looked good at the mall.”

  He grins and snorts. “Yeah. Not as good as you.”

  I guess he did see me.

  Lucas moves our table closer to Sam’s. Lexie joins him with a tray piled with packets. She gets a bit sniffy. I guess she’s still upset with him.

  Sam hunches over his packets, drawing close to me. “Hey, I want to talk to you about our lunch last week,” he says in a low voice.

  “Me too,” I say. “I’m so sorry I yelled at you. If you want to be with Alana, it’s okay.” I don’t know why I’m saying this, but I am telling the truth this time. “Look, I got jealous, but you’re a person, not some trophy. I do like you — a lot — but it’s more important to have you as a friend.”

  Sam grabs my hand. “Here’s the thing—”

  “What’s goin’ on?” Lexie interrupts as she opens packets for Lucas.

  What was he going to say?

  Sam rests his tongue on the chipped tooth, then waves his hand over the pile in front of him. “I’m consuming a lot of nugget sauce,” he says, which makes us laugh.

  “Where’s the rest of your team?” Lexie asks.

  “I think I lost them.”

  “What?” I say.

  “Yeah. Alana didn’t want me to eat the sauce in her car, so they left me here to go pet the statue at The Sacred Cow.”

  Crap! They thought of the cow, too? Who came up with it? Probably Alana, because we used to go there in middle school. What a kick in the ass.

  “How long have they been gone?”

  Sam looks at his waterproof watch. “More than thirty minutes.”

  Lexie and I give each other a that’s-strange look because they should have come back for him by now. Maybe they decided to do something else near that center.

  “Well, come sit with us while you wait,” I say.

  Sam brings the unopened packets to our table and says to Lucas, “Want these? I can’t do anymore.”

  Lucas tears back the cover from another packet of honey mustard. “Maybe.”

  Sam saunters back to his table and Lexie raises her eyebrows at me. He stuffs the empty, sticky packets into his front pocket then shrugs. “It’s proof,” he mumbles.

  “Yeah, good thinking,” Lucas says.

  I grin at Sam. “You just helped us, y’know. We get points for that.” I fold my arms on the table and face my pod. “If they don’t come for him, we should take him,” I say. “We can’t leave him sitting here.”

  “I don’t know,” Lexie bites her cuticle. “Do you think it’s a trick or something? If we take him, they get forty points.”

  “If it’s not a trick, wouldn’t you feel bad leaving him?”

  Lexie doesn’t answer and only chews on her finger some more until Lucas wipes his lips with the back of his hand and says, “He should come with us.”

  Ten minutes later, Lucas has consumed fifteen of the twenty packets and the rest of Sam’s pod hasn’t shown up.

  “One more gives us the max points,” I say.

  “You’re so good at math,” Willow says.

  “Yeah, just don’t ask me to do the quadratic formula.”

  Lucas finishes the sixteenth packet and sips on a Sprite Lexie bought for him. “Do you want to come with us or keep waiting for them?” he asks Sam.

  Come with us. Come with us.

  Sam checks his watch again. “I’ll come with you guys. Maybe we’ll run into them somewhere.”

  Hurray!

  “This’d better not be some kind of trick, Sam Rojas,” Lexie says as she pulls keys from her purse.

  Sam’s mouth drops open and then he laughs.

  We cram into the Jeep and, as luck would have it, I end up sitting by him. I couldn’t have planned this any better if my life was a movie script. And it feels more and more like one by the minute. I grab the list off the seat and look at the crossed-off items. There are only a couple left worth big points. I stare at item #60, establish two-way communication with an animal.

  It gives me a wild idea.

  “Hey, let’s go to the beach and see if I can communicate with those dolphins. You know, the ones that have been on the news.”

  There’s a gaping silence in the Jeep.

  “It’s worth five-hundred points. It probably guarantees us that we’ll win. It’s a good idea. I know I can do it. C’mon.”

  Tara shakes her head. “I don’t know. I think it’s too far to the beach.” She pouts at me. “Sorry.”

  Lucas grabs the list from me. “Yeah. It doesn’t leave us much time for any of these other things. Sorry.”

  Everyone stares at me and then Sam pipes up, “I know I’m not on this team, but I think you should do it. Even if you lose, we all win when Jane swims.”

  Lexie eyes Sam in the rearview mirror and then breaks into a grin. “Damn straight. Who cares if we lose?”

  Lucas agrees with Lexie. He almost always does. Willow and Tara shrug.

  “Text Irwin.” Lexie shoves her phone into Lucas’ hand, and he tippy-taps a quick message. Less than a minute later the phone buzzes.

  “Irwin wants to see it. He’s meeting us at the beach,” Lucas says.

  Euphoria. I’m thrilled to be cruising toward the swim and right now everything is hysterical. I can’t stop myself from laughing.

  As I giggle, Sam’s phone rings. Alana’s name lights up the display.

  Sam talks in a super-low voice. I lean forward and whisper in Lexie’s ear, “It’s Alana.” He quickly ends the call and says, “I’m in trouble. She’s mad.”

  “Why?” I ask, giggling despite myself.

  “When you were laughing she said, ‘I hear Jane Robinson. You’re with Jane Robinson. I know her laugh.’ So I told her I was riding along with you guys to the beach because you’re going to communicate with dolphins and asked if they wanted to pick me up there. Then she said I was cheating on her and hung up.”

  Is this cheating? Certainly not romantically. But Sam is playing for a different team, so maybe. A leftover laugh pops out even though it’s not too funny.

  Lucas goes back to playing DJ. He’s been at this all night and we’ve sung a couple oldies, but none of them fall into the anthem definition. Suddenly, he hears one and cranks the volume.

  Lexie sings along. “Get your motor runnin’.”

  I join the other Fallopian Tubes and our volume increases, so by the time we get to the chorus, we’re yelling at the top of our lungs, “Like a true nature’s child, we were born, born to be wild.”

  Lucas and Sam must think we’re hysterical and maybe a little weird, but they sing and by the end of the song, somebody in a car next to us would have thought we’d all escaped from a mental hospital. The six of us are shrieking the song when it finishes. We all crack up. And add thirty points to our total.

  ~~~

  News of my swim spreads from pod to pod, like a choice fishing spot, and everyone’s phones keeping going off. A few of the other teams beat us to the beach — the courtyard pod because for them the hunt was only something to do, and the science lab kids because they’re the group that always completes assignments early. Irwin stands off to the side.

  Offshore, two dolphins surface and submerge.

  “Look! There they are!” a disembodied voice behind me says.

  I sleepwalk toward the water. Blurry. Warm.

  Sam grabs me by the shoulder. “Wait a minute.
I have something for you.” He runs toward the Jeep, his feet kicking back at an awkward angle as he moves through the sand. Good thing he’s on the swim team instead of track.

  But he returns quickly with his drawstring bag, opens it and pulls out a set of goggles that dangle from his hand. He tips my chin up and fits the goggles on me, adjusting the straps like a pro until they’re snug. “Push on them, like this.” His palms are flat and I copy the motion. He reaches out, wiggles them side to side, and tells me to push again. “It really sucks when you get water in them,” he says. “You need to be able to see.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Wading in, the lip of the waves froths at my ankles. The sun is heading down, turning the water to oranges and reds. Deeper and deeper I walk — knees, hips. Feeling anxious. What if the dolphins don’t like me as much as I like them? What if the incident when I was five was a fluke — not a dolphin-tail fluke — just unusual?

  Oh, well. It’s too late to turn back now.

  C’mon, Jane.

  That’s not the voice in my head. It’s younger and higher. I heard it that night on the shore with Travis. It’s them.

  The water reaches my shoulders and they’re not far away.

  She’s coming.

  Either I’ve lost my mind or I really can hear them. And since I’m not five years old anymore, maybe Desiree’s right about the reincarnation thing. There are stranger things in this world. I dive into the oncoming surf.

  Swimming now. I’ve become weightless. All anxiety, all nervousness, all fear, gone. I’m calm and alert. The dolphins are within arm’s length. They circle me closer and closer. Concentric.

  The largest is named Bella; the other Nica. I don’t know how I know this.

  Nica swims close. Look at her. She likes us.

  Bella joins her. We’re going to have fun.

  Tiny currents swirl around us. A small fish swims by in front of me. I hold my arms straight out to the sides and float. The dolphins submerge.

  Something big is in the water behind me, unseen. It’s Bella. I feel her clicks and whistles telling me, I’m here. Desiree would call this “good vibrations.”